At times they sank to their waists in mire that had a sickening stench. They trod rotting logs over what appeared to be bottomless abysses of slime. Once they took entirely to an aлrial thoroughfare of branches and lianas for some hundreds of yards.
The devilish little swamp men showed an amazing agility at getting through what would have seemed an impenetrable barrier of vegetation. But at frequent intervals even they were almost baffled by the steaming, festering tangle of the swamp.
LONG TOM and Ham paid no attention to the passage of time. They even took no particular pains to avoid the treacherous vines and slime pools in their, path. As a consequence, they were frequently kicked.
The resultant pain, they hardly felt. For nothing could be greater than the ache that came from the knowledge that they had lost their friend, the man to whom they owed their lives many times over—Doc Savage.
They held no hope of ever seeing the mighty bronze man again. The
But, as they floundered deeper into the vast swamp, another and scarcely less ominous sound joined the macabre tooting of the owls.
'Listen!' muttered Ham.
Faintly, there reached their ears a monotonous drumming note. This rose and fell. One moment it would roll across the vast, foul-quagmire like syncopated thunder. The next it fell to a muted mutter, like fingers softly slapping a sponge.
It was as though the great swamp were a panting beast.
Periodically, there lifted over this unending sound a shrill caterwauling, as of a cat with its tail stepped on. Hoarser barks and howls were commingled.
The noise was altogether hideous.
'Ugh!' muttered Long Tom. 'I can guess what that is!'
'So can I,' Ham replied listlessly. 'A voodoo ritual!'
'Notice how it's affecting our captors!' said Long Tom.
Subtle excitement was pervading the ugly little swamp men. They clucked to each other in a language so degenerate that Ham and Long Tom could hardly understand it.
Later, when they came for a moment into a moonlight glade, Long Tom and Ham observed that their captors were doing a sort of revolting muscle dance in time with the throbbing. It was as though the measured beats of the tom-toms inflicted muscular convulsions upon their bodies.
Even Ham and Long Tom found themselves unpleasantly affected by the barbaric cadence. Indeed, Long Tom, discovering his shoulders jerking to the savage tune, swore violently—something he rarely did.
'I've heard the music at these rituals has a sort of crazing effect,' Ham muttered. 'I can believe it after listening to this. It's more than I've ever expected in all my life.'
Long Tom shuddered. 'One might expect something like this in a country of savages—but right here in the United States! Ugh!'
They came soon to a circular hill. It was no more than two score of feet above the swamp. In the center was a bowl-shaped hollow, a natural amphitheater.
Standing on the rim of this, Long Tom and Ham surveyed such a tableau of barbarism as they had never expected to see within the confines of the United States.
A STRING of small fires burned in the bottom of the hollow. These were greenish, and from the nauseating odor they cast off, evidently were kindled from wood which had been treated with sulphur. No doubt the string of blazes was intended to represent a serpent, for snake deities have a prominent place in most voodoo cults.
Numerous masked figures were near the fires. Some of them leaped and spun like hideous dervishes. Others merely sat and jerked their muscles in tune with the tom-toms. All wore masks.
The beaters of the tom-toms sat farther back. From time to time, they emitted a loud howl. They were unmasked.
It was upon the masks of the men in the center of the hollow that Long Tom and Ham rested their gaze.
These were of gaudy silk!
'Remember that flashy silk handkerchief Horace Haas carried in his coat pocket?' Ham inquired.
'Yes,' replied Long Tom. 'Why?'
'I was just thinking,' Ham muttered. He didn't elaborate on his thoughts.
Around the edges of the hollow huddled row after row of the vicious, monkeylike swamp dwellers. Long Tom and Ham were astounded at seeing so many present. Their number must run into the hundreds!
The whole ceremony had the air of something that would last for many hours, perhaps days. Gourds filled with a greenish liquor that was dipped from a troughlike container made of a hollow log, passed among the assembled voodooists quite often.
'Some kind of a vile dope the Gray Spider has fixed up for them, I'll bet!' Ham declared. 'Brings them under his sway easier!'
'Yo' keep goin'!' rasped Buck Boontown at their backs. 'Yo' don' stop here!'
Buck Boontown was alone among their captors in seeming not to take much stock in the voodoo ritual. He twitched a time or two in sympathy with the hideous rhythm—but no more often than Long Tom and Ham did the same thing involuntarily.
Around the edge of the natural theater, they were herded. They were led down to the group of masked men about the string of greenish fires.
It dawned on Ham and Long Tom that these men were the inner circle of the Cult of the Moccasin.
Before one of the masked men, they were halted.
This man wore, in addition to the brilliant silk handkerchief that hid his face, a long and gaudy gown embroidered with countless coiled serpents, probably intended to represent the deadly water moccasin. It concealed him from head to foot. Nothing could be told of his looks, except that he was a white man.
'I am the Gray Spider!' he informed Ham and Long Tom in a voice that sounded like it was coming out of a tomb. Obviously, the tone was disguised.
He held one clawlike hand before them. The veins on the back of the talon looked revolting as purple worms. Slowly, dramatically, the hand opened.
A hideous gray spider of a thing crawled about in the repulsive palm. A tarantula! Somehow, the ordinarily poisonous thing had been changed to a gray hue and its venomous quality eliminated. At least, it made no effort to injure the hand that held it.
The bit of dramatics was highly impressive.
But it was on the hand that the eyes of Ham and Long Tom rested. The vile skin bore smears of red ink!
Ham and Long Tom both recalled the red ink smeared over old Silas Bunnywell's office in the Danielsen & Haas building. They remembered the ink-well that had been employed to beat down some one, about the time Horace Haas and Silas Bunnywell vanished.
SUDDENLY both Ham and Long Tom made a concerted lunge at the master devil. They hoped to take their guards by surprise. But they failed.
Buck Boontown was alert. He whipped out a pistol. With lighteninglike blows, he knocked Ham and Long Tom backward. They were seized anew.
Buck Boontown now told his master of the outcome of the bridge ambush. As he was informed that his men had seen with their own eyes an alligator devouring Doc Savage's mighty bronze form, a fiendish cackle of delight rattled back of the silken mask.
'Take these two prisoners to the usual place!' he commanded. 'I have told you earlier what you are to do with them. Do you understand fully? It is very important that my little experiment works out properly!'
'I savvy,' mumbled Buck Boontown.
Ham and Long Tom were bustled from the natural bowl, and down the opposite side of the hill. Buck
